The invention relates to a device for creating and/or processing an object signature of an object in a scene, wherein the object signature is designed to describe and/or identify the object, comprising a characteristic extraction unit designed to extract at least one characteristic value of the object from the scene, wherein the characteristic value can be displayed in a characteristic space of the characteristic, and comprising a coding unit designed to code the characteristic value into an identification data unit, wherein the identification data unit forms a part of the object signature. The invention furthermore relates to a surveillance device, a method, and a related computer program.
Known embodiments of video surveillance systems include a plurality of surveillance cameras which also observe complex surveillance scenes. In many embodiments, the image data streams from the surveillance regions are combined and evaluated in a central location. In addition to an evaluation being performed by surveillance personnel, automated surveillance using image-processing algorithms has since become established. A typical procedure is to separate moving objects from the (substantially stationary) scene background, track them over time, and, if relevant movements are identified, trigger an alarm or continue tracking the objects.
If the surveillance region covers a wide area, it is also common to track the moving objects not only within the viewing field of a single camera, but also across the entire camera network within the surveillance region and for an extended period of time. The problem associated therewith is that of recognizing the moving objects in different locations and at different points in time. The reason for this is that the viewing fields of the cameras often do not overlap, and therefore a moving object leaves the viewing field of one camera and enters the viewing field of another camera at an undetermined, later point in time. To enable recognition to be performed, as much information as possible is collected about the moving objects when they appear. This collection of information is called the object signature. Using the object signature, it is now possible to recognize the objects in the camera network.
Publication DE 10 2005 053 148 A1, for example, which is the closest prior art, discloses a method for handling content information in a video surveillance system. Accordingly, content information on individual objects is made available in a network, and is distributed via the network. The content information is collected at various hierarchy levels, wherein the various hierarchy levels can be read independently of each other. It is also provided that the content information is coded in order to compress content information from lower hierarchy levels into higher hierarchy levels to create overview information, thereby advantageously enabling this overview information in the higher hierarchy levels to be used in a search for relevant events, in order to limit a review of image archives of video data to short, relevant time periods.